| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine and Mucedorus by William Shakespeare: That we will boldly enterprise the same,
Were it to enter to black Tartarus,
Where triple Cerberus with his venomous throat,
Scarreth the ghosts with high resounding noise.
We'll either rent the bowels of the earth,
Searching the entrails of the brutish earth,
Or, with his Ixion's overdaring son,
Be bound in chains of everduring steel.
BRUTUS.
Then harken to your sovereign's latest words,
In which I will unto you all unfold
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: "Well, now look!"
"Wait a little. We have plenty of time to be disappointed. It's
on the second line from the top, so the prize is seventy-five
thousand. That's not money, but power, capital! And in a minute I
shall look at the list, and there -- 26! Eh? I say, what if we
really have won?"
The husband and wife began laughing and staring at one another in
silence. The possibility of winning bewildered them; they could
not have said, could not have dreamed, what they both needed that
seventy-five thousand for, what they would buy, where they would
go. They thought only of the figures 9,499 and 75,000 and
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: was, there are remaining only the bones of the wasted body, as they may be
called, as in the case of small islands, all the richer and softer parts of
the soil having fallen away, and the mere skeleton of the land being left.
But in the primitive state of the country, its mountains were high hills
covered with soil, and the plains, as they are termed by us, of Phelleus
were full of rich earth, and there was abundance of wood in the mountains.
Of this last the traces still remain, for although some of the mountains
now only afford sustenance to bees, not so very long ago there were still
to be seen roofs of timber cut from trees growing there, which were of a
size sufficient to cover the largest houses; and there were many other high
trees, cultivated by man and bearing abundance of food for cattle.
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven.
And I cannot but smile when I think that (again like Wordsworth)
they should have so specially disliked the consequence.
It came upon them by surprise. Liberal friends of the precise
right shade of colour had assured them, in Mrs. Turner's drawing-
room, that all was for the best; and they rose on January 23
without fear. About the middle of the day they heard the sound of
musketry, and the next morning they were wakened by the cannonade.
The French who had behaved so 'splendidly,' pausing, at the voice
of Lamartine, just where judicious Liberals could have desired -
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